University of Virginia Library

1. BEAUCHAMPE.

1. CHAPTER I.

The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown—the
first fresh smiling days of April had come at
last—the days of sunshine and shower, of fitful breezes,
the breath of blossoms, and the newly awakened song of
birds. Spring was there in all the green and glory of her
youth, and the bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific
burden of the season. She had come, and her messengers
were every where, and every where busy. The birds bore
her gladsome tidings to

nor were the lately trodden and seared grasses of the forests
left unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside
sprang up at her summons. Like some loyal and devoted
people, gathered to hail the approach of a long exiled and
well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over
which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at
her feet. The mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing
might be heard, and far off murmurs of gratulation, rising
from the distant hollows, or coming faintly over the hill
tops, in accents not the less pleasing because they were the
less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every
land blossom and every living thing rejoice, met, in the
happy region in which we meet her now, a double tribute
of honour and rejoicing. The “dark and bloody ground,”
by which mournful epithets Kentucky was originally
known to the Anglo-American, was dark and bloody no
longer. The savage had disappeared from its green forests
for ever, and no longer profaned with slaughter, and his
unholy whoop of death, its broad and beautiful abodes. A
newer race had succeeded; and the wilderness, fulfilling
the better destinies of earth, had begun to blossom like the
rose. Conquest had fenced in its sterile borders, with a
wall of fearless men, and peace slept every where in security
among its green recesses. Stirring industry—the
perpetual conqueror—made the woods resound with the
echoes of his biting axe and ringing hammer. Smiling villages
rose in cheerful white, in place of the crumbling and
smoky cabins of the hunter. High and becoming purposes
of social life and thoughtful enterprise superseded that
eating and painful decay, which has terminated in the
annihilation of the native man; and which, among every
people, must always result from their refusal to exercise,
according to the decree of experience, no less than Providence,
their limbs and sinews in tasks of well directed
and continual labour. A great nation urging on a sleepless
war against sloth and feebleness, is one of the noblest of
human spectacles. This warfare was rapidly and hourly
changing the monotony and dreary aspects of rock and
forest. Under the creative hands of art, temples of magnificence
rose where the pines had fallen. Long and lovely
vistas were opened through the dark and hitherto impervious
thickets. The city sprang up beside the river, while
hamlets, filled with active hope and cheerful industry,
crowded upon the verdant hill-side, and clustered among
innumerable valleys. Grace began to seek out the homes
of toil, and taste supplied their decorations. A purer form
of religion hallowed the forest homes of the red man,
while expelling for ever the rude divinities of his worship;
and throughout the land, an advent of moral loveliness
seemed approaching, not less grateful to the affections and
the mind, than was the beauty of the infant April, to the
eye and the heart of the wanderer.

But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies
of nature, in the scene upon which we are about to
enter. Though the savage had for ever departed from its
limits, the blessings of a perfect civilization were not yet
secured to the new and flourishing regions of Kentucky.
Its morals were still in that fermenting condition which

invariably distinguishes the settlement of every new country
by a various and foreign people. At the distant period
of which we write, the population of Kentucky had not yet
become sufficiently stationary to have made their domestic
goods secure, or to have fixed the proper lines and limits
regulating social intercourse and attaching precise standards
to human conduct. The habits and passions of the first
settlers—those fearless pioneers who had struggled foot to
foot with the Indian, and lived in a kindred state of barbarity
with him, had not yet ceased to have influence over
the numerous race which followed them. That moral
amalgam which we call society, and which recognizes a
mutual and perfectly equal condition of dependance, and a
common necessity, as the great cementing principles of the
human family, had not yet taken place; and it was still too
much the custom, in that otherwise lovely region, for the
wild man to revenge his own wrong, and the strong man
to commit a greater with impunity. The repose of social
order was not yet secured to the great mass, covering with
its wing, as with a sky that never knew a cloud, the sweet
homes and secure possessions of the unwarlike. The fierce
robber sometimes smote the peaceful traveller upon the
highway, and the wily assassin of reputation, within the
limits of the city barrier, not unfrequently plucked the
sweetest rose that ever adorned the virgin bosom of innocence,
and triumphed, without censure, in the unhallowed
spoliation. But sometimes there came an avenger;—and
the highway-robber fell before the unexpected patriot; and
the virgin was avenged by the yet beardless hero, for the
wrong of her cruel seducer. The story which we have
to tell, is of times and of actions such as these. It is a
melancholy narrative—the more melancholy, as it is most
certainly true. It will not be told in vain, if the crime
which it describes in proper colours, and the vengeance by
which it was followed, and which it equally records, shall
secure the innocent from harm, and discourage the incipient
wrong-doer from his base designs.